Gary Tobin, President of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco, has an interesting op-ed in the November 10 edition of Forward. The Institute has studied not only faculty political affiliation but also faculty attitudes regarding specific political, religious, and cultural issues. For example, the Institute found that “one-third of faculty cited the United States as among the top two threats to international stability” — behind North Korea but ahead of Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and China. This is interesting and important work, but I want to focus on a different passage in Tobin’s op-ed: “The problem isn’t liberalism itself; liberals are a famously quarrelsome and fractious bunch. And in its classic form, liberalism has been quite conducive to the aspirations and interests of Jews. On campus, however, a pernicious type of leftism, masquerading as liberalism, has all too often become dogma — unchallenged and unchallengeable, the closest thing to faith itself.” While Tobin was obviously focusing on “classic” liberalism’s effect on the Jewish community, he’s exactly right on many fronts. Liberalism has been quite conducive to the aspirations and interests of many different kinds of people. As conservatives critiquing the academy, we must do exactly what Tobin has done — distinguish between the academy’s liberal members and its radical leftist elements. The problem with the academy is not that it is populated by a group of people who are almost exclusively to the left of National Review (I tend to think that the academy will always be a bit more liberal than the general population). Instead, the problem is that it is increasingly dominated by a form of leftism that is dogmatic, totalitarian, and often just plain silly. In the coming years — as a thoughtful friend recently noted — it will be critical that we peel away the thoughtful liberals from the campus radicals. If we truly believe in the marketplace of ideas (and we do), then the presence of liberals on campus is vital and necessary. Yet, through a combination of misinformation and misunderstanding, many campus liberals see people like me and the other PBC contributors as threatening their place on campus. We have to change that perception, or we will continue to face the university as we do now: as a monolithic force united against any meaningful reform.